Product Design And Development Quiz.

Affordances refer to the potential actions or uses that an object or interface offers to a user. It is about the perceived capabilities of the object or interface and the possibilities it presents for interaction. This concept is based on the idea that design should communicate functionality and purpose, allowing users to easily understand how to use and interact with the object or interface.

In a heuristic evaluation, a group of usability experts review a user interface according to a small set of principles. This method involves experts evaluating the interface based on their knowledge and experience, rather than conducting formal experiments or administering questionnaires. The experts use a checklist of guidelines to assess the interface's usability and identify any potential issues or improvements. This evaluation helps to uncover usability problems and provide recommendations for enhancing the user experience.

Interactive sketches and paper mock-ups are recognised kinds of prototypes because they both allow for early exploration and testing of design ideas. Interactive sketches are low-fidelity prototypes that simulate the interaction and flow of a design, while paper mock-ups are physical representations of a design that can be easily manipulated and iterated upon. Both prototypes help designers gather feedback and make improvements before investing more time and resources into developing a final product.

A persona in the context of goal-oriented interaction design is used to role-play through an interface design and represents a particular type of user. Personas are fictional characters created to represent different user types or target audience segments. They are based on research and data about real users and are used to understand their needs, goals, behaviors, and preferences. By using personas, designers can empathize with users, make informed design decisions, and create user-centered interfaces that meet the needs of specific user groups.

Learnability and subjective satisfaction are both attributes of usability. Learnability refers to how easy it is for users to learn and understand how to use a system or product. It focuses on the user's ability to quickly grasp and become proficient in using the product. Subjective satisfaction, on the other hand, relates to the user's personal feelings and satisfaction with the overall experience of using the product. It takes into account factors such as enjoyment, comfort, and overall user satisfaction. Generalisability and usefulness are not mentioned as attributes of usability in the given options.

In the usability engineering lifecycle, getting to know the user involves drawing up a user profile and observing representative users. Drawing up a user profile helps in understanding the user's characteristics, preferences, needs, and goals. This information can then be used to design a user-centered product. Observing representative users allows for firsthand observation of their behaviors, interactions, and challenges with the product, providing valuable insights into their needs and preferences. These methods help in gaining a deeper understanding of the target users and their requirements, which can then be used to inform the design and development process.

Usability testing is important because more often than not, intuitions are wrong. This means that designers cannot rely solely on their own assumptions and intuitions about how users will interact with a product. Experience changes one's perception of the world, which implies that designers need to test their designs with actual users to understand how they perceive and interact with the product. By conducting usability testing, designers can gather valuable feedback and insights from users, which can help them improve the usability and user experience of the product.

Competitive analysis in the context of usability involves comparing the performance and effectiveness of different competing systems or interfaces. This analysis helps in identifying strengths and weaknesses of each system, understanding user preferences, and making improvements based on the benchmarked usability standards. Usability benchmarking is an important aspect of competitive analysis as it allows organizations to measure their own system's performance against industry standards and competitors. Therefore, the given answer correctly states that competitive analysis is used for usability benchmarking and involves analyzing competing systems.

Thinking aloud testing is a method where the user verbalizes their thoughts and actions while performing a task. This process slows down the user by about 17 percent as they have to articulate their actions, which can affect their speed. However, this method cannot provide performance data as it focuses more on understanding the user's thought process rather than measuring their efficiency. Additionally, thinking aloud testing is particularly useful in the early stages of development as it helps identify usability issues and gather feedback to improve the design before implementation.

In a formal experiment, objective measurements are made to ensure accurate and unbiased data collection. This helps to eliminate any subjective biases or opinions that could affect the results. Additionally, a larger number of test users is needed to obtain a more representative sample and improve the reliability of the findings. Lastly, a fully implemented system is required to accurately assess its performance and effectiveness in real-world conditions.